Work at a specialized underground weapons test site in New Mexico, contracted earlier this year, was linked to planning for a potential new operation targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, according to a report from CNN. The U.S. military has notably left Iran’s hardest-to-reach site under Pickaxe Mountain untouched so far, but President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials have been openly talking about striking it.

On February 27, the day before U.S. and Israeli forces launched their initial wave of strikes on Iran, the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) quietly announced it had awarded a sole-source deal to Pate Construction Co., Inc., for new construction at the so-called Alternate Seismic Hardrock in Situ Test (ALT-SHIST) site. The work was needed to support an upcoming classified live-fire test. ALT-SHIST is situated within the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), a sprawling U.S. Army-managed complex in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto desert basin. DTRA is a relatively small and obscure organization that plays a leading role in U.S. military efforts to develop new and improved ways to respond to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) threats.

WSMR and DTRA have come up in discussions about strikes on Iran in the past. The U.S. military’s heaviest conventional air-dropped weapon, the 30,000-pound-class GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bunker buster bomb, has been extensively tested at multiple sites there in the past. DTRA was also directly involved in its initial development. MOPs made their combat debut during U.S. strikes last year on underground Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow and Natanz as part of Operation Midnight Hammer. The possibility has been raised that a different site within WSMR may have been used to test the plan of attack against Fordow, which involved two ventilation shafts being hit with six GBU-57/Bs each. The bombs were dropped in rapid succession, with each one burrowing deeper and deeper into the facility below. WSMR also happens to contain the site of the first atomic bomb test in 1945.

“The plans for the test [at ALT-SHIST] were connected to the Iran war,” CNN said in its story, published yesterday, citing unnamed sources “familiar with the matter.” Beyond that, the planned testing was tied to a “need to develop a way to target Iran’s deepest-buried underground facilities and, likely, simulate U.S. strikes against specific nuclear facilities.”

CNN said it was unable to independently verify whether or not the test in question had occurred.

A formal justification for the sole-source contract to Pate Construction that DTRA released in February did not mention Iran or elaborate on the need for the new testing at ALT-SHIST, but stressed there was an urgent requirement critical to U.S. national security.

“The services required are the immediate and mission-critical enabling services for a ‘real-world’ national security ordinance [sic; ordnance] test. This is not routine construction; it is the highly specialized remediation and operational preparation of a unique, subterranean test facility at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR),” according to the justification document, which DTRA officials had approved on February 24. “The work is a critical path dependency for a live-fire test designed to validate classified capabilities against rapidly emerging threats.”

“As the incumbent contractor for over a decade, Pate Construction Co., Inc. possesses unparalleled and non-transferable tacit knowledge of this specific subterranean test facility. This is a unique Government structure with complex geological and security considerations, and Pate Construction Co., Inc.’s direct, hands-on experience is a tangible asset that no other source possesses,” the document adds. “Pate Construction Co., Inc. is the only contractor that
currently maintains a fully mobilized presence at WSMR with the specific heavy equipment and security-cleared operators required.”

CNN‘s piece says apparent work at ALT-SHIST was visible in satellite imagery of the site between mid-February and mid-March, but the outlet said it was unable to confirm whether or not this was related to the contract with Pate Construction.

We reviewed satellite imagery showing work at a remote DTRA/STRATCOM test site that coincided with this contracting action, but we couldn’t confirm its purpose.

The Pentagon didn’t respond to our questions regarding the test, and we couldn’t independently confirm it occurred. pic.twitter.com/k8zyvqWy56

— Davis Winkie (@davis_winkie) September 9, 2026

ALT-SHIST is an active test site, and any work observed there earlier this year could well have been linked to other projects. For instance, additional publicly available DTRA contracting documents offer details about planned work on a specific part of the ALT-SHIST site, called Tunnel 7, tracing back to last year, as part of a project nicknamed Millstone Willemite 6 (MW-6).

“This task requires the construction contractor to repair and address the damage to Tunnel 7 caused by prior incidents, in accordance with government-provided designs, specifications, and other contract documents,” according to one contracting document dated September 15, 2025. “The contractor will also be responsible for providing support during testing activities, as well as safing after each test and general support between tests. All tunnel construction must be completed by 15 June 2027.”

“The contractor shall repair a D-shape tunnel and overburden using the D-shape of 20 feet depth and width, inside the tunnel. The contractor shall remove and repair any damage to the ribs, crown, and invert to Tunnel 7,” that same document continues. “After the repair of Tunnel 7, the contractor shall provide general construction support to instrument the tunnel in preparation for testing and then safe the tunnel for re-entry post-testing.”

The schedule for the MW-6-related work indicates that it is separate from what Pate Construction was hired to do at the site back in February.

ALT-SHIST, which was first established in 1995, is also not the only site DTRA makes use of within WSMR. As its name indicates, it is an alternate to the original SHIST site, use of which began in 1993.

“There was a small addition made to the SHIST site, but that area has been heavily used since 2007,” according to an environmental impact study the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) completed in 2015. “The granite bedrock at these sites has been fractured and damaged by extensive testing. There are no existing granite areas adjacent to those sites where similar testing can be performed.”

USACE conducted that study in support of the establishment of a new test site at WSMR, simply called the Granite Test Site, to succeed the original SHIST. The Granite Test Site is now in use. There are many more sites within the range complex designed to simulate underground and otherwise hardened targets. This is also just one aspect of the wide array of testing that occurs on a daily basis at WSMR.

All three also appear to have been involved in the testing and development of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). 5/10 pic.twitter.com/3aWSYXIZln

— Fabian Hinz (@fab_hinz) June 25, 2025

However, the presence of large areas of undisturbed granite is a key factor here, as that is particularly relevant for testing weapons designed to penetrate into extremely deeply buried facilities. CNN‘s piece yesterday noted that Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain site is built underneath a granite mountain.

“The mountain in White Sands, they specifically picked mountainous areas that were solid rock, and they used state-of-the-art tunneling technology to make the kind of cavities in the mountain that you would put this kind of [Iranian nuclear] facility in,” Gary Stradling, a retired scientist who previously worked for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), told TWZ in an interview last year. “I think that there is a lot of work that DOD has done in these kinds of facilities that is highly classified, and I couldn’t talk to you about it. This is very sophisticated work. It is not casual, and it’s not speculative. These are real experts who are doing the work. Careful, technical, quantitative work to be able to deliver this kind of war-fighting capability to the services.”

TWZ spoke to Stradling, who did work tied to earth-penetrating munitions at various points during his lengthy career, in the wake of Operation Midnight Hammer.

Me, standing at the edge of a MOP crater on a mountain top at White Sands Test Range, where detailed studies of massive earth penetrators were studied for effectiveness against deeply buried targets by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) —formerly Defense Nuclear Agency.… pic.twitter.com/JYq1V2xO6q

— Gary Stradling (@gary_stradling) June 24, 2025

The U.S. military notably did not strike Pickaxe Mountain, which is situated immediately to the southwest of Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz, during Operation Midnight Hammer. The site also went untouched by Israel during last year’s 12 Day War. American and Israeli forces did not target it during major combat operations earlier this year, either. All of this underscores the targeting challenge the site presents, even for strikes using MOPs, which TWZ explored in detail earlier this year and that has continued to make it a point of particular discussion.

CNN‘s report yesterday was primarily focused on a new assessment of ongoing construction at Pickaxe Mountain from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank in Washington, D.C.

Satellite “images reveal more road activity at Pickaxe Mountain in 2026 than at any point in the site’s history,” according to a report CSIS published yesterday. “There is a clear surge in construction activity in 2026 that corresponds to the raising and hardening of the portal accesses, paving of the internal road network, reinforcement around access areas, and the flattening and removal of excavation spoil.”

“This assessment can neither refute nor substantiate the Israeli intelligence claim that Iran moved centrifuges into Pickaxe Mountain,” CSIS’s report also noted. “The continuous construction, the absence of an increased internal security posture, and the lack of observed nonconstruction vehicles and equipment suggest the underground facility is not yet capable of enrichment work, if that is the intended purpose. Further analysis of daily activity would be needed to establish the site’s pattern of life beyond its current construction footprint.”

This is in line with TWZ‘s own previous reporting on Pickaxe Mountain back in July, when there were already signs of growing activity following the establishment of a shaky ceasefire between the United States and Iran the preceding month. As we wrote at that time:

“As with the strikes on Fordow, multiple bombs could be dropped on the same impact point to try to penetrate further down into Pickaxe Mountain. Whether there might be similar ventilation shafts or other weak points that could be exploited at Pickaxe Mountain is unknown. …”

“A strike ‘right in the front door’ on the tunnel entrances at Pickaxe Mountain would be another option to at least hamper access to the facility inside for a time. This could be combined with strikes aimed at sections of the tunnel networks that run deeper inside the facility, but that are still close enough to the surface to be reachable by available conventional munitions. For instance, MOPs may not be able to hit the main cavern areas, but they could possibly hit certain tunnels that might lead to them.”

“Even a combined strike on entrances and shallow tunnels at Pickaxe Mountain could still present certain challenges. Firm intelligence on exactly where the tunnels snake under the mountain could be limited, making it difficult to select the best impact points. This is exactly why the U.S. military has been investing heavily in advanced, void-sensing fuzes for MOP and other bunker buster bombs for decades now. These fuzes detect when a munition has penetrated into a sufficiently large space, such as a room or tunnel in an underground facility, to help maximize damage. Fuzes that can effectively ‘count’ floors also help to ensure the munition has burrowed sufficiently deep before detonating.”

…

“…the U.S. military could conduct follow-on strikes on the entry points at Pickaxe Mountain to disrupt any attempt to regain access, as well.”

“Destroying Pickaxe Mountain will be a scientific and targeting challenge,” CSIS also noted in its report yesterday. “It is an underground fortress buttressed by granite. It is one of the only facilities in Iran’s nuclear program that the United States has not yet struck. Structurally degrading Pickaxe Mountain requires more than just kinetic force – it takes actionable high-confidence intelligence and sophisticated mathematical modeling.”

With all this in mind, it is not at all hard to imagine how new testing at ALT-SHIST, as well as other sites, would be essential for exploring additional options for striking Pickaxe Mountain and/or other deeply-buried targets in Iran using MOPs and/or other munitions.

It’s also worth noting here that GBU-57/Bs are understood to be in relatively short supply, though it is unknown how many of them are currently in inventory. Furthermore, the U.S. Air Force’s B-2 Spirit bombers are currently the only aircraft certified to employ the huge MOPs operationally. There was a report in 2024 that prime contractor Boeing was working to expand its capacity to produce these bombs. A MOP successor, the GBU-76/B Next Generation Penetrator (NGP), is in development now, but prototyping work is expected to run through the end of Fiscal Year 2028.

President Donald Trump certainly has raised the prospect of a strike on Pickaxe Mountain publicly on several occasions since July. He has also repeatedly said that the site is being persistently surveilled, particularly from space.

“There’s another place called Pickaxe Mountain, another nice place. We may have to give them a shot there, too, because someone said there was a little movement at the site,” Trump said yesterday during a speech at a convention the Republican Party is hosting in Dallas, Texas, ahead of this year’s midterm elections. “We don’t need much. We see everything, you know, because of Space Force.”

“We may hit Pickaxe [Mountain] very soon,” the President also said while speaking to reporters at the White House last Friday.

Trump on Pickaxe Mountain: We may have to give them a shot there too. We see everything. We can the see tag on their coat. “Muhammad Al-Fayed” It’s never Muhammad Jones. pic.twitter.com/UQm939OruL

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 10, 2026

Trump on Iran:

We may hit Pickaxe Mountain very soon because if there is anything going on with Pickaxe. pic.twitter.com/kwlHZuV6M7

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 4, 2026

Whether growing activity at Pickaxe Mountain finally prompts a U.S. strike at the site, either alone or as part of a larger operation, remains to be seen. If and when such a mission is launched, past and future testing at sites like ALT-SHIST in New Mexico will all but certainly have played an important part.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Work At Underground Test Site A New Indicator Of Possible Strikes On Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain Bunker appeared first on TWZ.

The Oregon Air National Guard’s 142nd Wing has taken another significant step toward turning the F-15EX Eagle II into a true multirole fighter, conducting the first live-bomb drops from operational F-15EXs during training at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. The milestone came during a roughly three-week deployment to Nellis in late August and early September in support of the U.S. Air Force’s Weapons Instructor Course (WIC).

Photographs released by the Air National Guard yesterday show F-15EXs from the 142nd Wing carrying live bombs on the flight line and departing Nellis with the weapons loaded. Official imagery shows the jets armed with a single 500-pound Mk 82 freefall bomb on the fuselage centerline, while spotters also captured F-15EXs carrying a 2,000-pound Mk 84 freefall bomb in the same position.

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The 142nd’s F-15EXs are only now acquiring a capability that was deliberately absent from the wing’s previous F-15C fleet. The Portland, Oregon-based unit was an air-superiority organization when it operated the F-15C, while the F-15EX is ultimately derived from the F-15E Strike Eagle and has considerably more inherent multirole potential.

As we reported in July, the wing had already begun laying the groundwork for this transition. In May, 142nd personnel traveled to Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, where they loaded and dropped inert BDU-50 and BDU-56 training bombs from their F-15EXs. Those weapons replicate the size and weight of 500-pound-class Mk 82-series and 2,000-pound-class Mk 84-series bombs. Over 10 missions, the crews dropped 24 BDU-50s and 12 BDU-56s.

While the F-15EX had already been tested in an air-to-ground role by the Air Force’s test community, the Mountain Home deployment was the first time an operational Eagle II unit had loaded and dropped bombs. The next step, the wing said at the time, would be live weapons employment at Nellis.

The Air Force has emphasized that the F-15EX’s primary mission remains defensive and offensive counter-air, particularly in the homeland-defense role. At the same time, the service’s plans call for the aircraft to provide combatant commanders with strike packages capable of operating in contested environments.

The F-15EX is inherently well suited to such a mission. Derived from the Strike Eagle lineage, it combines that aircraft’s large payload capacity and long range with substantially modernized avionics and electronic warfare systems. The aircraft’s design leaves considerable room for additional weapons and mission equipment, making an expansion into air-to-ground operations relatively straightforward compared with trying to add that capability to the F-15C.

The 142nd has been building the institutional knowledge required to make that transition. Three of its pilots underwent a nine-month course covering the science, tactics, and procedures associated with air-to-ground weapons employment before returning to help establish the wing’s training program. Weapons personnel also traveled to Nellis earlier this year to work with F-15Es assigned to the 59th Test and Evaluation Squadron and become certified in bomb loading procedures.

As well as teaching pilots how to release a weapon, the wing had to develop an entirely new air-to-ground training pipeline for pilots, maintainers, and weapons personnel at a unit that had not previously operated an aircraft with an operational bombing mission.

Nellis is home to the Air Force’s Weapons School and is central to the Weapons Instructor Course, making it one of the most important locations in the service for developing and evaluating advanced tactics. The 142nd’s participation therefore places its emerging F-15EX air-to-ground capability in an environment specifically focused on integrating advanced weapons, tactics, and mission planning.

The wing’s new live bomb-dropping capability also comes as the Air Force continues to explore how broadly the Eagle II can be employed.

Test and evaluation units have already demonstrated that the aircraft can accommodate sophisticated air-to-ground weapons. Earlier this year, an F-15EX from the 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron participated in a munitions-load training event at Kadena Air Base in Japan, where Air Force personnel practiced loading live GBU-53/B Small Diameter Bomb IIs onto the aircraft.

The F-15EX is also capable of carrying the conformal fuel tanks used by the F-15E, which can provide additional fuel as well as additional weapons stations. The operational F-15EXs delivered to the 142nd have so far been seen without CFTs, however, and the status of the plan to equip the Oregon aircraft with them remains unclear.

CFTs could become increasingly important if the Air Force moves toward more demanding air-to-ground missions for the Eagle II, particularly those requiring substantial weapons loads and long-range operations.

Another unresolved question is how the Air Force will ultimately crew F-15EXs when they are performing more complex multirole missions.

The Eagle II retains the F-15E family’s two-seat cockpit, although the Air Force’s initial operational concept has generally involved flying the aircraft with a single pilot. That leaves an unused cockpit that could potentially become an important asset as the mission set expands.

Former 142nd Wing commander Col. Michael Kosderka previously told TWZ that the addition of a weapons systems officer or other specialist in the rear cockpit could open the door to more air-to-ground capabilities.

“We can start talking about putting all kinds of air-to-ground capabilities into the airplane, potentially putting WSOs or other experts in the backseat as well to have us do any number of multi-role capabilities that it’s just physically not possible to in the C model,” Kosderka told TWZ in an interview back in 2024. “So the X has tremendous growth capability. It’s really exciting.”

Two crew would be particularly relevant to complex strike missions, where managing sensors, weapons, communications, electronic warfare, and other mission systems can place substantial demands on a single pilot. As we have discussed in the past, a back-seater would also be highly beneficial for the emerging drone controller role.

The Weapons School has also been associated with developing two-seat F-15EX operations, indicating that the second cockpit’s utility is already being considered at the tactical-development level.

For now, it would be premature to characterize the F-15EX as an operational replacement for the F-15E Strike Eagle in the air-to-ground role. The 142nd’s newly demonstrated bombing capability remains part of an ongoing training and development process.

Meanwhile, the Air Force is preparing to field substantially larger numbers of F-15EXs. Beyond the 142nd, additional Guard units are planned to receive the type, in California and Louisiana, as well as Michigan.

The Air Force has announced plans to base F-15EXs at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, where they will eventually replace older F-15Es, which, in turn, are slated to move to Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, as part of a broader realignment of the Eagle fleet.

Another two active-duty F-15EX squadrons are slated to replace the former F-15C force at Kadena. The first F-15EX for permanent assignment at Kadena recently departed Boeing’s St. Louis, Missouri, facility for the 142nd Wing, where it will undergo final preparations before its eventual deployment to sprawling Okinawa.

The operational implications of the air-to-ground training therefore extend well beyond Portland.

The Eagle II’s generous weapons payload, long range, modern sensors and electronic warfare systems, and ability to carry both air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons give the Air Force a platform that can potentially perform several missions without sacrificing the characteristics that make the F-15 attractive for homeland defense and counter-air operations. The same characteristics are also extremely relevant to any export operator, which would expect to operate the Eagle II in a multirole capacity.

As well as a weapons-training milestone, the first live-bomb drops by the 142nd Wing provide more evidence that the F-15EX’s mission is continuing to evolve.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post Operational F-15EXs Drop Live Bombs For The First Time appeared first on TWZ.